The Auto Worker
Marquart, Frank
It has been said that every industry breeds its own type of man. True though this is of the auto industry, it would still be a mistake to infer a "composite auto worker" or a "typical auto...
...Often young workers, who earned over two dollars an hour in an auto plant before they were laid off, will resist a job offer that pays less than half that much, but when they are on Welfare they are in no position to bargain...
...How can people on the shop level or on the local level cope with the effects of automation, the company's drive for more production, management's policy of moving operations to another plant or contracting work out to a sup...
...At a recent Chrysler conference convened to consider how the union would cope with problems stemming from speedup, automation, layoffs, seniority and transfers, one delegate after another told what was taking his place in his plant...
...Workers who would have difficulty borrowing even from the credit union, find no trouble getting a loan from the shop financiers...
...Sometimes he will go to the beer garden to "hoist a few" with shop mates, but this does not happen as often as in former days...
...Since the more highly skilled and better educated tend to hold more progressive attitudes and to support the union's economic and political goals, the Wayne scientists believe that the American trend toward higher skill, higher income and more education is promising...
...The Detroit Free Press (June 3, 1948) said the gross take of gamblers in one Wayne County plant was estimated at $25,000 daily by a high police official...
...He will be concerned with what goes on in his union but he will not assume any responsibility...
...And because we can't solve such problems our political opponents build themselves up in the shop by tearing us down...
...When an official of the Detroit Welfare Department was asked what happens to auto workers when they exhaust their unemployment compensation and can't find work, he explained that some workers have other resources to fall hack on...
...So pressed by debt are some auto workers that their urgent need to borrow has given rise to a form of petty usury in the plants...
...who enjoys a reasonable degree of status and security, thanks to the progressive collective bargaining patterns braintrusted by Walter Reuther and his staff of able technicians...
...Testifying before the Kefauver Committee in 1951, (JAW Secretary-Treasurer Emil Mazey expressed the viewpoint that organized rackets and gambling cannot exist in any plant without the knowledge and consent of some level of management...
...Under a Michigan law a worker can have all but $10 of his pay check attached by creditors through a garnishment system that has in effect converted the Common Pleas 'Court into a collecting agency for clothing, furniture, jewelry and other merchandizing houses...
...Old-time chief stewards said they never experienced such pressure since the union was organized 20 years ago...
...On pay day the creditor will come to work with a big roll of bills so that he can cash pay checks and deduct principal and interest, or just interest, depending on the terms...
...In their union meetings and conferences Chrysler workers insist that the best way to make production comparable would be to change General Motors' standards to those of Chrysler's...
...One-fourth displayed emotional identification...
...In the back of his mind is the thought that in an hour of need he can turn to the union and somehow, some way the union will help him...
...SUB plans are fine...
...That has not settled the problems of speedups...
...It is fine for the company through our collective bargaining negotiations to give us these things after a long and hard struggle but there is no point in getting them if they are going to turn around and take them back by increasing speedup and production standards in the shop...
...Just over half felt there is any real difference between the Democratic and Republican parties...
...And occasionally he may be picked by the local executive board to serve on some political action assignment during a city, county or state election campaign and receive "lost time" while out of the factory ("lost time" unionism would make a revealing study in itself) . He may even regard his union political activities as a possible way to escape factory work eventually, for he knows that union officers and international representatives started their union careers while working in the shop...
...Conditions in the auto industry affecting work and mode of living are so varied and so complex that anyone writing on the subject must constantly be on guard against the danger of generalizing too much...
...This may well be the most significant of our findings...
...The Welfare Department works closely with the Employment Security Commission, and Welfare recipients must accept available work or lose Welfare aid...
...For when workers "goof off" during working hours, rolling dice, reading a newspaper, playing cards or just "shooting the breeze," then management concludes that the line should be speeded up or else operated with fewer workers...
...a worker who has to "buck production" on a moving assembly line, jumping in and out of automobile bodies all day long like a living screw driver, will take a different attitude toward his job than a cushion builder who is able to control his work pace so that he can get his eight hours of work out in six hours and spend the remaining two hours studying horse-racing forms or reading comic books...
...Most number bets ranged from 10 cents to 50 cents...
...In 1955 (a year of high production and employment in the auto industry) one clothing store filed nearly 6,000 garnishment actions...
...Anyone writing about the auto worker attitudes must keep in mind that (to cite only a few examples) an auto worker who has accumulated no more than two years' seniority will feel differently about "security" that a man who has twenty years' seniority...
...It has been said that every industry breeds its own type of man...
...As a result, workers have lost some of their faith in the efficacy of the union...
...During pheasant season he may take a few days off work for a hunting trip (many auto workers go to upper Michigan to hunt deer) . Summer will see the family take bumper-to-bumper trips to one of Michigan's many lakes or to one of the large, recently developed metropolitan area parks...
...Such "crazy racing against the clock" is always an invitation to management to retime jobs and tighten up production standards...
...However, if he is really representative, the auto worker in our case study will not seek a union career...
...there is widespread apathy, discontent, and frustration, said this veteran unionist...
...Tens of thousands of auto workers lost their jobs as a result of new mechanization, decentralization, merging of independent companies and the folding up of supplier plants...
...Spe cifically, the article will try to focus attention on the following areas of the auto worker's life situations: 1) work in the factory...
...The worker who does this is envied by his fellow workers, even though he probably has to put in 80 hours a week to net as much money as he earned in the shop in 40 hours...
...The active majority sets the tone of prevailing sentiment in the union, however, and most of the wavering middle group goes along...
...Under certain arrangements the Welfare Department will assume land contract obligations on a home, subject to reimbursement when the worker gets back on the job...
...So many workers are becoming afflicted by the garnishment plague that organized labor in Michigan has been campaigning for a revision of the law...
...from above, the International executive board and regional staff members insist that the local officers "hold the ranks in line," that they prevent unauthorized strikes or slowdowns...
...Badly needed is a thorough study in the auto plants to determine if and to what extent gambling "corrupts the secondary union leadership," how it affects shop-level collective bargaining, what attitude workers themselves take toward gambling, what percentage of workers gamble, and what kind of repercussions gambling has on the worker's income and home life...
...Such faith invariably leads to disappointment when the union is confronted with problems over which it has no control...
...Each group will favor that system of seniority which offers it the most job protection...
...But when all available resources have been exhausted, and there is no other breadwinner to help out until the husband returns to work, then the Welfare Department will get another applicant...
...Every summer he will take the family to the annual union picnic...
...A special study would be needed to find out how much these "shop salesmen" earn in a year to supplement their regular wages...
...his leisure time activities...
...How this puts local officers in an untenable position was recently told to me by a local union officer: We [the local union administration] are in the middle...
...Some union shop stewards serve as agents and develop a bond with the foreman...
...Such frustration undoubtedly has its origin in the failure (perhaps in the inability) of the union to "humanize working conditions" in the factory...
...And in the smaller companies, shop level union representatives have been able to "stretch" contract interpretations and to gain concessions on issues not clearly defined in the contract...
...workers in the supplier plants must compete on labor output with workers who operate the more costly and efficient machinery in the Big Three plants...
...The slogan which we hailed in the early organizing years of equal pay for equal work must be dusted off and made a double barreled weapon if our membership is, not to become victimized in the rat race of competition in the auto industry...
...In former days union spokesmen had much to say about taking competition out of the ranks of labor...
...vulnerability of the company to union pressure...
...They think they know but they don't...
...Shop bankers" do a lucrative business loaning money to hard-pressed fellow workers at 25 per cent interest per week...
...We come back to convention after convention and we are still confronted with that problem...
...Borrowers do not have to bother with co-sponsors, nor wait until their credit rating is checked, nor put up collateral...
...Notwithstanding the way they are fleeced, the debtor workers will defend the skin game because it enables them to borrow on the spur of the moment when they need money badly...
...Thus they alternate every hour (or longer, depending on the arrangement) -while one works the other takes off...
...If he is active in the union, he will attend meetings, become a member of a caucus and either become a candidate for chief steward in his department or else support the candidate favored by his political group...
...General Motors has made a practice of exercising its managerial rights up and down the line...
...He never has trouble selling out his stock...
...Living on Welfare doesn't mean living at all...
...Of those surveyed, one-third were loyal, interested and active in political campaigns...
...Actually the union is torn by various kinds of rivalries and antagonisms and occupational group interests...
...As for farming, most workers know they will be fortunate if they can pay off their car and household appliances, let alone find the initial capital to pay for farm land and equipment...
...Doubling up is a cooperative arrangement which enables workers to alternate between working a stipulated period of time on the job and then taking an equal period of time off the job...
...And the recurring squabbles over who will get how much overtime has become the subject for standard jokes in the UAW...
...And some workers turn to gambling to get extra money...
...And to bring production standards in line with those in General Motors' plants, Chrysler is prepared to become as tough as General Motors...
...Describing how union morale is at an all-time low, a plant committeeman said workers seemed to have more respect for foremen than for chief stewards or plant committeemen...
...He said many chief stewards and committeemen are no longer interested in fighting for the workers who elected them, but are primarily interested in the benefits that go with those shop level union posts: top seniority, higher classification rates, the chance to get in on the overtime, freedom of physical movement, and the possibility of moving up the career ladder...
...Older workers know only too well that management seizes on every excuse to speed up production, to take a man off the line here and there, so that the remaining work force must work harder to get out the required production...
...In a poll conducted in 1940, Fortune found that "The desire to run a business is highest in the low income brackets where the immediate prospects for its fulfilment are probably least...
...This is why at union meetings older workers always applaud their officers for denouncing the "double up artists...
...The survey disclosed that 17 per cent had not gained employment between the time of layoff and the time of the interview...
...And are not workers, like other social groups in America, subject to the impact of mass media, which are rapidly altering the concept of "getting ahead...
...The authors call attention to the "untapped possibilities, the unfilled needs of people for social endeavors in which they might fervently believe and eagerly participate...
...Some part of the worker's basement is sure to be made into a "workshop," equipped with work bench and a shelf of tools...
...But we who go into the plant walls have a long way to go in attaining the full citizenship or the dignity of workers that we are entitled to...
...who is fortified in times of layoff by supplementary unemployment benefits...
...From time to time he may be seen sporting a shirt inscribed to show that he is a member of his local union's bowling team...
...it means subsisting at the bare minimum...
...Itemized in the budget is $9.90 for storm window payments and $14.67 goes toward paying off the inevitable television set...
...He has an emotional commitment to his union because it gives him a certain sense of security...
...The very economics of the auto industry forces workers to compete in all sorts of ways...
...They don't know what it means to be in a position where no matter what you do it turns out to be wrong...
...The Michigan CIO Education Department reports a relatively large demand for how-to-do-it books...
...the quality of his life as a family man and as a member of his community...
...A "fair day's work" is determined by many factors, some of them far less tangible than a stop watch...
...after all, I've got a family to support...
...So now they have established intra-corporation rivalries as a means of trying to reduce the cost of producing their cars...
...How do workers react to all this...
...To this day union shop level representation and working standards are better in Chrysler than in General Motors...
...past practices...
...They become sullen, resentful, and fearful for their jobs-fearful lest the company farm jobs out if increased production is not forthcoming...
...Besides, small locals are easier to control than large locals, especially militant locals like ours...
...When working in his basement on some repair job, this auto worker finds a sense of satisfaction such as he never derives from his job in the factory assembly line...
...This program was developed in response to dissatisfaction among many skilled workers with the 1955 auto industry settlement, when they felt that their demands got short shrift at the bargaining table because the emphasis was on helping the product: on workers who are in the majority...
...there is the factory routine and discipline...
...In its 1957 convention the UAW drove a big wedge into its industrial union structure by granting tacit recognition to craft unionism in its own body...
...True though this is of the auto industry, it would still be a mistake to infer a "composite auto worker" or a "typical auto worker...
...For every job the corporation has, they will give Dodge a chance to bid on it, De Soto a chance to bid on it, and Plymouth a chance to bid on it...
...There is, to repeat, no "typical" auto worker, but it is safe to say that a sizable number of production workers in the auto plants entered the industry in the post-war period and are between 25 and 35 years old...
...workers must keep their badges in plain view as they pass the guards...
...A small sum is set aside each payday for the future education of his children...
...In addition to permitting unscrupulous merchants to take a big bite out of the worker's pay check, the law also gives them the right to repossess goods on which heavy payments have already been made...
...Chief stewards busy taking bets don't have time to take up grievances...
...It's easy enough for the International to tell us to be responsible, to lecture us about providing good leadership and all that...
...The human problem of speedup in the auto industry has yet to be fully explored by industrial sociologists...
...In this era of "people's capitalism" and "social unionism," liberals no less than conservatives tend to see the image of the auto worker in terms of a contented workman who earns well over two dollars an hour plus substantial fringe benefits...
...The combined prejudice against age and race apparently was sufficient to deprive them of any chance of getting work in their former classifications in large factories...
...This is borne out by the McGraw-Hill survey, which disclosed that it is not unusual to find foremen or assistant foremen acting as gambling agents or overlooking the activities of in-plant agents in return for a cut...
...What appeared as a trifling "four-bit issue" to some uninitiated people seated in the visitors' gallery actually served as the channel through which local union delegates could pour out their accumulated resentment against the International...
...Glittering advertisements lure many working class families into buying gadgets that can be had for little or no down payments, with the result that the inevitable day of reckoning arrives and the workers are besieged by collecting agencies...
...progress of mechanization in the plants...
...we must raise production standards in line with GM's...
...Another $7.20 goes for the monthly installment on a fence around his lot...
...There are whiskey salesmen, jewelry salesmen, car salesmen, real estate salesmen-"you name it and we can get it for you wholesale...
...Seventy to eighty per cent of relief applicants are Negroes," said a Welfare official...
...Ignoring the fact that doubling up is the exception and not the rule, management insists on overhauling production standards all along the line...
...Besides, the International union jumps on our necks, gives us hell for not providing responsible leadership...
...The discrimination this group faced in gaining reemployment is revealed by such facts as the average length of unemployment was greater for this group (despite the fact that this group went to an average of twice as many places to find work as the sample as a whole) and that the wage drop of Negroes was 50 per cent greater than that of the total sample...
...In future bargaining these groups will be entitled to direct representation on local and international bargaining committees...
...Several respondents indicated that the only job possibilities were those of janitor or laborer on night shift...
...Its coerced rhythm, the inability to pause at will for a minute's rest, and the need for undeviating attention to simple routine made it work to he avoided if possible...
...No matter how much seniority he may have, his job is not really secure...
...By the very nature of assembly line work, some jobs are harder than others...
...that discriminatory hiring practices bar Negroes, women and unskilled older workers from jobs even in a period of high employment, and that about one-half of the total sample used up their state jobless benefits before finding other work...
...Inevitably the drift toward "selfdetermination on contract matters" for special occupational groups will grow with the steadily increasing proportion of skilled to unskilled workers...
...University Books Inc...
...When asked why, he said the old spirit of fire and fight has been replaced by an attitude of "What's in it for me...
...that it is necessary, perhaps, to try to keep things from being worse (war, depression, weakening of unions, for example) but rarely do the responses reveal a positive spirit of pride or adventure or "mission" in what labor is doing, rarely any sense of dedication to helping build a new world...
...Moreover, stewards and committeemen are afraid to "stick out their necks"-afraid to take a militant stand for fear it will lead to a slow down or walkout that, in turn, might get them fired...
...Relief men were taken off the line and transferred to other jobs, with the result that workers could not leave for a drink of water without falling behind in their work...
...Unionized workers have always been able to wrest more shop level concessions from smaller companies than from the Big Three...
...Some workers are forced to apply to the Welfare Department even when they are still working...
...The company usually waits until production starts on a new model and then orders its time study experts to retime jobs...
...Thus if a man owes $50.00, he must shell out $12.50 each week for interest...
...For recreation the family will of course watch television and go to a movie occasionally (when the husband isn't working overtime) . Except for scanning his daily newspaper and his monthly union paper, the worker seldom reads, and when he does it will probably be a paperbacka mystery, a western or a Mickey Spillane story...
...To be sure, a small minority of the members stand opposed (15 to 20%), ready to sway with whatever pressures play most tellingly upon them in a particular campaign...
...We can't win and the International can't lose-or so they think .. . How rank and file discontent finds expression in devious ways was witnessed at the 1957 UAW convention, when the proposal for a 50cent dues increase triggered a three-hour storm of controversy...
...Our study of auto workers contributes rather striking evidence that it is possible for wage earners to experience vast social and economic gains and yet remain steadfastly union oriented in their political views...
...That helps the people who retire...
...There is no support here for a picture of top-level political maneuvering that lacks membership backing...
...In addition to these loan sharks, a host of "merchant princes" do a profitable sideline business...
...the budget does not allow for many drinks at present prices...
...My emphasis, F. M.) Assuredly it is significant and encouraging to know that as workers improve their standards of living and even move into "middle class" suburban neighborhoods they still remain union oriented...
...Among these factors are: company labor policies...
...12 per cent were forced to retire involuntarily, even though under 65 years of age...
...These shop salesmen act as agents for discount houses and get a handsome commission on sales-on the initial down payment as well as on each installment payment...
...Not only does the factory look like a prison from the outside but it has also a prison-like regimen...
...Equal pay for equal work and equal WORK for equal pay must become a reality," said a Chrysler worker in a letter to his union paper...
...There are the uniformed plant guards stationed at the gate...
...Paradise Valley, the congested Negro section, is infamous for its toll of crime, disease and dilapidated, ratinfested housing...
...What might be called the "representative" auto worker in this group is around 30 years old, has a wife and two small children to support, earns a take-home pay of around $75 a week (more when he works overtime) . The family lives in a modern house, bought a few years back for about $11,500.* This worker's payments on his home come to $75 a month...
...Operations were abolished and workers transferred to other jobs in their seniority division, bumping those with less seniority...
...True, a small percentage of workers "make the break" by quitting factory work and buying a gas station or a small auto repair shop or opening up a grocery store...
...Of course, as soon as a big automobile company begins to expand its payrolls and hire new workers, as Ford has been doing since it swung into 1957 model production, then the Welfare Department drops back to its "residual case load," which is comprised of handicapped workers, women, men over forty years of age, unskilled workers with poor records, and Negroes...
...When discontent seethes in the shop, local union leaders at all levels-from stewards to top officers-bear the brunt...
...Ironically workers in the shop tend to blame the union more than they blame management...
...In some families the wife manages to find a job and is able to keep the family off relief...
...Not a few workers find themselves in financial bondage to these factory Fuggers, able to meet only the interest payments each week, so that the principal remains to exact more interest in the weeks ahead...
...I could possibly get a job and then if I had the stuff I could probably stay...
...Several Negroes who were in their fifties indicated that they were told "We're not hiring" by major automotive firms in the area, although it was known that these plants were hiring...
...With few exceptions employees deemed responsible for stoppages, slow downs, or other violations of the agreement have been disciplined by the corporation," write Harbison and Durbin in Patterns of Union-Manage ment Relations...
...He believes that the officers should run things-"That's what we elected them for...
...Because he needs the money, the auto worker usually prefers to take "pay in lieu of vacation," but if work is slack he may take off a week "to fix things around the house" or else to rent a cottage on the lake and relax with the family...
...Of the three chief forms of gambling, 50 per cent is spent on handbooks (horse racing bets) ; 30 per cent for numbers...
...To go on Welfare, workers must virtually be down to their last cent in cash or liquid assets, although they are usually not required to sell their car, home or furniture...
...it means surrendering "luxury" items on which creditors may be pressing for payments...
...Of all the people on the top committee, there's only one who probably doesn't think it...
...The big companies, especially General Motors and Ford, have always been tough about work standards, prepared to suffer long and costly strikes to keep such standards intact...
...Medical plans are fine...
...In his own neighborhood the worker can scarcely fail to see small stores closing up and big stores or supermarkets opening up...
...In cases where janitorial work was obtained, wage drops of twenty cents an hour were involved...
...4) quest for security...
...For all but a possible few, such selling is the nearest they will ever get to "being in business for myself...
...When Labor Votes was widely reviewed in the labor press, which quoted passages telling how auto workers trust political recommendations of their union leadership, but somehow passages like the following were not singled out for quotation: Reading through our interviews, even those with strongly pro-labor unionists, produces an impression that this political business is relatively remote and unimportant...
...Others tried Federal Government employment and where successful took a wage cut...
...If they don't deliver, then we'll replace them with people who will deliver...
...Long-established little privileges were eliminated, such as five-minute washup periods before quitting time...
...To say that the representative auto worker is inactive does not mean that he is indifferent...
...When Negroes move into apartment houses in mixed neighborhoods, they often have to pay as much as $95 a month for an apartment previously occupied by a white family paying only $75...
...In one plant a whiskey salesman goes to work on the afternoon shift wearing an "ammunition belt" ringed with 3-ounce plastic cups of whiskey selling for a dollar apiece...
...The UAW has taken a strong stand in opposition to gambling...
...Skilled tradesmen, who are usually better educated than production workers, may sometimes read more "egghead stuff"-books on labor history, politics, science...
...Not only do working conditions-and therefore also worker attitudesdiffer as between one corporation or another, but even within any given corporation the picture changes from year to year...
...I know I myself have thought of it...
...Heat costs $12 a week and another $20 will he spent for food, not including milk...
...He will pay $5 to the credit union each week to liquidate the debt incurred when laid off last year for over three months...
...Unfortunately the image does not accurately reflect the actual life experience of the auto worker...
...According to the McGraw-Hill study, gambling incomes sometimes ran 50 times as high as regular wages...
...the relatively young and those with more than average income...
...the kind of home he lives in and how the home is furnished...
...They get in debt "up to the hilt" -so much so that they can no longer make ends meet, for their weekly installment requirements plus regular household bills amount to more than the pay check...
...Addressing a mass meeting of Chrysler workers, UAW Secretary-Treasurer, Emil Mazey said: "Chrysler has put into effect a system of having each division bid on the jobs within the corporation itself...
...workers must punch in their time cards, stay in prescribed areas in the shop, take their places at the assembly line or machine, and then work under compulsions exacted by the mass production process...
...The Welfare Department will pay for essential fuel, utilities and urgent medical costs and will see to it that the family can obtain surplus food, such as flour, beans, cooking oil, some canned meats, butter and cheese...
...In 1954, for example, when a serious recession hit the industry, Chrysler workers canvassed the neighborhoods urging prospective customers to buy Chrysler and not General Motors or Ford cars, so that Chrysler workers could have jobs, even if Ford and General Motors workers were dumped on the streets...
...Far from it...
...Overtime may be frowned upon by some of the older workers whose homes have long since been paid for and whose children are grown up and married, but the vast majority of workers who have young children to support and a heavy long-term home mortgage to pay off, display no qualms about working overtime, regardless of how many of their fellow workers may still be unemployed...
...Many workers find part-time work in stores during a busy season, especially the Christmas holiday period from mid-December to mid-January...
...Whatever we do turns out to be wrong...
...plier firm...
...No satisfactory definition of speedup has been formulated...
...To find the answer to this question a Wayne University professor recently made a survey among the workers who lost their jobs when a supplier plant closed down a year earlier...
...If I can help it, my kids are going to get a college education when they grow up...
...Their opposition caucus is getting stronger all the time...
...Doubling up offers those who practice it a chance to escape at intervals from the monotony of the hated assembly line...
...they will also vote independently on contract matters dealing only with them, and can strike if they deem it advisable subject to the approval of the International...
...No investigation has been made to determine whether gambling activities are less extensive today than they were in 1948, when the McGraw-Hill publications made a survey which disclosed that gambling in Detroit auto plants grossed over $20 million annually...
...I've thought I might try to make a career out of working for the union...
...Baseball pool tickets, horse race bet slips, the numbers game-these bring a rich return to professionals or their agents who carry on gambling in the plants...
...What happens to such displaced workers, many of whom accumulated 20 to 25 years of seniority...
...14 he will send them to the UAW-sponsored children's camp located on Lake Huron...
...It helps the people who are laid off...
...Chrysler management is now engaged in a campaign to undo those standards, justifying this action on the plea that "we have to compete with General Motors...
...Even within the same occupational group or classification range, conflicting claims and interests rage...
...Yet, no matter how dissatisfied and restive they might be, auto workers are basically loyal to their union and even support its political goals...
...After observing that "out of this progressive experience in the local union may come aspirations for union office, for a career in the union," Chinoy quotes one local officer who commented about himself and his colleagues as follows: I think that everybody who gets active thinks that some day he might get a union job...
...his hopes and fears for the future...
...A player will buy several number slips a day...
...And if we suc ceed in holding the guys in line so that they don't walk out, then our political opposition in the shop does a job on us by agitating the workers against us, telling them we're not on the ball, that we're not militant, that it's time for a change, and so on...
...The quest for the "fast buck" is not unrelated to the decline of idealism in the auto workers union today...
...Today one can meet any number of former Hudson workers or Murray Body workers or Packard workers who feel that their union failed them dismally...
...a jewelry firm ran a close second by chalking up over 4,000 cases...
...The convention authorized skilled craftsmen, white collar workers, technicians and engineers to make supplementary agreements dealing with their special problems...
...Sometimes workers borrow money from their credit union, pending the callback to work...
...Such stewards spend more time on gambling than on grievances...
...If his caucus is in control of the local he may from time to time be rewarded for his activity by getting the opportunity to attend a weekend conference out of town, with liberal expenses paid...
...A trim line worker comes into the shop with a dozen watches strapped to his arms and the prospective customers are offered a variety of choices...
...For example, one welder making over $2.00 an hour on the day shift, became a mail helper at the post office on afternoons making $1.71 an hour...
...The ratio of chief stewards (or plant committeemen) to production workers is higher in small than in large companies...
...In the automobile factory today a worker can buy anything from a bracelet for his wife or girl friend to a family car...
...On the whole, auto workers in the Detroit area were found to vote in agreement with union recommendations, and generally to approve labor's political activities...
...degree of militancy of the local union leadership and the ranks...
...They caution against accepting the more-money-more-contentment-more-conservative formula...
...True, a small minority would readily vote in favor of allowing no one to work overtime until all workers on layoff have been recalled to work...
...how much money he earns and how the earnings are spent...
...one-third thought that " ...people like me don't have any say about what the government does...
...In vain do union officers plead with the offenders to work at a "normal" pace and protect their work standards by staying on the job...
...But in the early months of 1957 workers in Chrysler plants worked ten hours a day, six days a week while thousands of low-seniority workers were still jobless...
...In this hectic period of the auto industry, he never knows when he might find himself in serious economic difficulties...
...Last fall Chrysler sent a team of its production experts to the General Motors plants to study every phase of auto production-cushions, trim, stampings, body, paint, etc...
...What the study has to say about the experiences of Negroes deserves to be quoted in full: Thirteen per cent of the total sample were male Negroes...
...and 20 per cent for baseball pools...
...I know from my own experience at Ford that although we have had a number of strike votes, the International Union, the Ford Department has come in and cooperated with us admirably...
...A UAW resolution states: "The Union believes that when in-plant rackets and gambling exist, there is always the possibility of corrupting the secondary leadership of our union, which can lead to the weakening of our union, the destruction of the moral fiber of our membership and the deterioration of effective bargaining power within the plants...
...it means moving into a cheaper rental unit if ordered to do so by the Welfare Department...
...According to a Detroit News story (July 3, 1948) the Dearborn police chief charged that more than $5 million a year was grossed by gamblers in the big Ford Rouge plant and that top management displayed indifference-in fact the company made a thorough cleanup impossible by firing two minor officials who had cooperated with the police...
...In The Automobile Worker and the American Dream Ely Chinoy wrote: "Without dissent, assembly line work was looked upon as the most exacting and most strenuous...
...I also honestly believe that it is not the entire answer to say-although it is correct and true-that we can go out on strike any time our membership in any plant wants to put up this kind of struggle...
...Chrysler workers are in competition with Ford and General Motors workers on production standards...
...Such union contract provisions as seniority, pensions, supplemental unemployment benefit credits, company-paid group insurance give the worker a stake in his job and render the dream of independent enterprise more remote and unattractive...
...If there's a wild cat, the company won't even discuss grievances with us until the guys go back to work, so nothing gets solved...
...This is why union leaders at the shop level-plant committeemen and chief stewards -fight a losing battle to end the practice of "doubling up...
...Most of them won't admit it, but they would like to be on the union payroll...
...The older sections of Detroit comprise vast sprawling areas of slums and semi-slums...
...An old-timer who was extremely active in the early sit down strikes and who played a leading role in the 1939 Dodge strike, seldom or never attends meetings any more...
...Chrysler management have stated publicly that they expect production standards comparable to those of General Motors...
...Jobs were retimed and workers told to put out extra production or else...
...The most hated place in the auto factory is the assembly line, for work on the assembly line is repetitive, monotonous, physically exhausting...
...And if Chrysler keeps on decentralizing, building new assembly plants in other states, then new locals will spring up in those states and dues will roll into the International just the same...
...The description of "a normal work pace" found in management time study manuals is not science but bias...
...Also ignored by management is the fact that only the younger workers have the stamina to maintain the breakneck double pace for any length of time...
...From below, the workers demand strong action...
...Even the overwhelming majority of workers who do not participate in union activity, understand that their advancement is tied up with the union's objectives for higher wages, more fringes and shorter hours...
...Although applying for Welfare is no longer regarded as a social stigma in the way that it once was, many workers, especially those living in better neighborhoods and suburbs, think of Welfare only as a last desperate resort...
...With remarkable clarity and insight a delegate to the 1957 UAW convention summed up the nature of the problem as follows: Pension plans are fine...
...there are strict shop rules and regulations and there are the "plant protection police" to see that the rules are observed...
...But even on the easier jobs, workers overlook no opportunity to escape from the monotony of the assembly line...
...They've been away from the shop so long they don't know what goes on there anymore...
...5) participation in politics...
...But if we get defeated in the next local union election, what does the International care...
...The average wage of this group has been about 4 per cent less than that of the entire sample...
...3) attitude toward the union...
...Will the UAW tend to become less a solid industrial union and more a federation of occupational councils-tool and die council, maintenance council, foundry council, spring council, etc...
...In the scale of prestige today, showing off a new car or a modern, appropriately furnished home, is more important than running an independent business...
...Most auto workers take the attitude: "I better earn all I can before the next layoff comes...
...And to pay off that new car (or the newly-purchased used car) and that modern home, a considerable number of workers supplement their wages by "selling on the side," or by repairing cars in their spare hours, or by holding down two fulltime jobs...
...In fact he will be among the vast majority of anonymous members who never attend union meetings...
...Many references to the resemblance of factory work and prison can be found in the imaginative literature of the labor movement...
...2) home and family living...
...It helps the people who are ill...
...The study further showed that on the average it took three months to find a job, that the average worker had to go to at least four places before he could find work, that one-sixth had to apply at more than eight places, that, in addition to having his income reduced while unemployed, the worker had to accept a job at 4 per cent below his former wage rate...
...All day long I get shouted at and shout back...
...For example, a worker will proceed furiously for an hour, performing not only his own operation but also the operation of his fellow worker stationed next to hint...
...This article is an attempt to convey a more concrete picture of the auto worker's life and labor-how he reacts to his job and to his union...
...I get into senseless arguments with workers who demand that I do the impossible-stop management's mad drive for more production...
...Over and over workers protest to me because they get transferred to other jobs when fewer men are needed to do the job they were on...
...In the spring and summer he will putter around the vegetable garden in the 30-foot lot back of the house...
...A similar poll conducted among auto workers today would undoubtedly prove that the traditional American dream of making one's living in some independent business is no longer seriously entertained by the vast majority of auto workers...
...This is the conclusion of three Wayne University social scientists who conducted a serious study to determine how auto workers voted in the 1952 presidential election.* Among those workers who evidenced strong commitment to union activities were the better educated, the skilled, * When Labor Votes, by Arthur Kornhauser, Albert J. Mayer, Harold L. Sheppard...
...When the Negro family cannot possibly afford such high rent, two or three Negro families will share the apartment, with the result that congestion and its attendant evils crop up all over again...
...If his children are between the ages of 8 and • Not all auto workers live in neat and modest homes...
...A rash of speedup grievances breaks out in one department after another...
...a tool and die maker with steady work all year and many hours of overtime is able to provide a different standard of living for himself and his family than a low-seniority assembly worker who gets laid off at the first curtailment of production...
...But it is also significant and by no means so encouraging to learn that this union orientation is notably lacking in social vision and idealsm...
Vol. 4 • July 1957 • No. 3
